Advice, part 1: Do

(ok, big breath, take it nice and slow, here we go)

The much anticipated series of one-word advices (with long-winded explanations) starts...RIGHT NOW!


Do

I hate starting with something that seems to tightly tied to a corporate slogan, but Do feels like a quality starting point. It's the essence of so many things, the antithesis of so many mistakes.

Whenever you have something that you want or need to do, do it.

Don't procrastinate, don't put it off, don't reason it out of your life, just get up off of your backside and get it done.

The drip in your chimney is just going to get worse if you don't get it fixed.

The grass is just going to be harder to cut tomorrow when it's a little longer and you finally get around to cutting it.

The Red Sox will never again win the World Series in your lifetime - or, if they do, it won't be the same - so buy the frickin' tickets. Mortage the house, sell the baby, do whatever it takes to buy the tickets, moron.

And you've been telling everybody that you desperately want to get to Europe for years, so go.

Don't let anything stop you; don't make up reasons to not go, to sit and wait for a better time to do it.

The best time to do whatever it is you want or need to do is now.

If this means that you have to start making lists everyday and posting them huge on the refrigerator for eveyone to see so you'll be accountable, then do it.

If it means that you should grab one of those books that list places to see (or things to do) before you die - or to write one of your own - then do it.

This bit of advice - Do does have one correlary that you need to be aware of, however, and that's the also important Do No Harm.

We are not beings who live in isolation. Every action that we take has reprecussions, like ripples in a still pond.

Before you take that leap and throw yourself willy nilly into the great wide open, remember that your actions have reprecussions. Make sure that those reprecussions won't hurt other people.

That is the only way that I can suggest tempering today's simple directive to Do, because as Lincoln told us...

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

Thanks for getting this far, folks...